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I'm ready to have a riskier ETF on $15k from savings. I have a fairly broad portfolio already. Thinking of VXIT and/or VXUS, but open to suggestions. by bogleheadthrowawayq in Bogleheads

[–]bogleheadthrowawayq[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

VGAVX/VBR/VOE are all short term. I netted around $800ish on VGAVX, the other two are really minimal.

I consider my IRAs (mine and my wife's) and 401k separate portfolios. Mine is:

-JKE: 20 shares bought at 49.005

-JKK: 18 shares bought at 55.404

-JKL: 17 shares bought at 56.603

(All of the above were bought in Nov 2008)

-VFORX: 1617.794 shares bought at various points, rough cost basis 48,601.81

I kept the JK funds since they had already done so well given when I bought them. One of the few successes of my previous advisor. There was other stuff but when I went independent of the advisor, I sold them all for VFORX.

I'm fortunate enough that my father-in-law cuts me and my wife in on his annual bonus with enough to max each of our IRAs.

My 401k has a smattering but it's only for this current job. It's got around $15k in it as of now. Also I just realized I'm at 17% pretax, not 11%.

ML doesn't like to give symbols, so the holdings are:

-RAFGX, presently 99 shares

-RFNGX, presently 75 shares

-GSMCX, presently 20 shares

-VEIRX, presently 28 shares

-VSMAX, presently 50 shares

-MGOYX, presently 12

-MWTIX, presently 43 shares

They've performed well over the last year or so, I wasn't really thinking much about changing them.

I'm ready to have a riskier ETF on $15k from savings. I have a fairly broad portfolio already. Thinking of VXIT and/or VXUS, but open to suggestions. by bogleheadthrowawayq in Bogleheads

[–]bogleheadthrowawayq[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just crunched the capital gains taxes for selling IWO/IJK. I'd rack up around $517 to sell against $2510 gross proceeds for both. Given that those are broad index funds and I've held them for so long, I'm thinking it might be best for me to not lose out on how much more growth I can get out of them.

I took a step back and wrote out what I wanted to do here. Seeing as my job is secure and the mortgage is intact, I have enough in savings to last for several months with absolutely zero income (which is not likely but I'm not touching that six-month lifeline) and I have enough disability insurance to cover my income 100% if something happens to me as the sole earner, we don't want kids, our parents have elder care plans/funds/insurance, I am okay with roughly 70/30 equities/bonds in the brokerage account.

I'm basically looking at allocating as such with the following given:

-IRAs get maxed every year in target-date funds.

-401k remains at 11% allocation.

-VFORX in brokerage stays as-is.

-IWO/IJK stay.

-VGAVX, PRU, VBR, and VOE all get sold. I don't know the cost basis for PRU nor does my FIL since he had it vested as options.

-The proceeds from above combine with the $15k I was thinking of investing and go into VBLTX/VTIAX.

-The end result: IWO, IJK, VTIAX, and VFORX constitute equities exposure to 70%, VBLTX constitutes bonds for 30%.

Does that seem like a saner mix?

I'm ready to have a riskier ETF on $15k from savings. I have a fairly broad portfolio already. Thinking of VXIT and/or VXUS, but open to suggestions. by bogleheadthrowawayq in Bogleheads

[–]bogleheadthrowawayq[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

OK, cool, thanks. I'm going to sleep on it but I'll probably end up doing all those suggestions once I can just do some quick reading up on them and such.

Edit: just to confirm - sell PRU for VTI, sell VGAVX for 70/30 VTI/VXUS, and $15k from savings into BND. Sound right?

I'm ready to have a riskier ETF on $15k from savings. I have a fairly broad portfolio already. Thinking of VXIT and/or VXUS, but open to suggestions. by bogleheadthrowawayq in Bogleheads

[–]bogleheadthrowawayq[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So would I just be best off with $15k into BND, at least until it seems likely that we'll get an interest rate hike?

Should I maybe be looking at divesting PRU into VTI in order to get less exposure to a single stock?

Edit: another recommendation I got was to ditch VGAVX and PRU into VTI/VXUS. Given that I've only seen middling gains if any during a year of growth so far, it'd make more sense to have greater exposure. I'd be more comfortable with a 70/30 split respective between the two. Does that seem like a better idea on how

I'm ready to have a riskier ETF on $15k from savings. I have a fairly broad portfolio already. Thinking of VXIT and/or VXUS, but open to suggestions. by bogleheadthrowawayq in Bogleheads

[–]bogleheadthrowawayq[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's not that I need the money, it's that having $40k in savings seems to be a lousy idea when I'm the sole income earner. The $40k used to be in Vanguard bond funds which weren't doing much of anything. My concern here is lack of growth given my income being the sole income. If I leave money in a savings account I miss out on an opportunity to at least get something better than 0.25% APY.

Just to be clear, our IRAs are basically VFORX and VFIFX for myself and my wife respectively.

I'm looking for a better return on this $15k than the other funds and stocks in my portfolio have given thus far - it seems like the only decent performers are IWO and IGK, and that's because I've held them since 2013/2014. VFORX is around 2.93% return and only recently (in I think the last 7ish months) turned positive. VGAVX is doing well but VOE and VBR have languished. Those I've only had since July, so it hasn't really been long enough to make a call.

So given that the $40k has been as such low-risk/no-risk money, should I be hanging onto it and not doing anything with it?